THE first farm animal Gene Baur
ever snatched from a stockyard was a lamb he named Hilda.
That was 1986. She’s now buried under a little tombstone
near the center of Farm Sanctuary, 180 acres of vegan nirvana here in the
Finger Lakes region of upstate
Back then, Mr. Baur was living in
a school bus near a tofu factory in
Now, more than a thousand animals once destined for the
slaughterhouse live here and on another Farm Sanctuary property in
As Farm Sanctuary has grown, so too has its influence. Soon,
due in part to the organization’s work, veal calves and pregnant pigs in
And earlier this month, the New Jersey Supreme Court agreed
to hear a case concerning common farming practices that a coalition led by Farm
Sanctuary says are inhumane.
All of these developments reflect the maturation and
sophistication of Mr. Baur and others in a network of
animal activists who have more control over
Among animal rights groups, the 1980s were considered the
decade of grass-roots activism. The 1990s saw the rise of court actions and
ballot initiatives. This decade is about building budgets, influencing policy
and cultivating elected officials, all with a deliberate focus on livestock.
Farm Sanctuary and other groups still know how to make the
most of gory slaughterhouse footage from hidden cameras. The animals they call
“rescued” — some abandoned, some saved from natural disasters, some left for
dead at slaughterhouses — clearly started life as someone else’s property.
But in recent years they have adopted more subtle tactics,
like holding stock in major food corporations, organizing nimble political
campaigns and lobbying lawmakers.
While some groups, like the Animal Welfare Institute, work
with ranchers to codify the best methods of raising animals for meat and eggs,
most, like Farm Sanctuary and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,
ultimately want people to stop using even wool and honey because they believe
the products exploit living creatures.
But all of these believers have learned that with less
stridency comes more respect and influence in food politics. So they no longer
concentrate their energy on burning effigies of Colonel Sanders and stealing
chickens. They don’t demonize meat — with the exception of foie
gras and veal — or the people who produce it.
Instead, they use softer rhetoric, focusing on a campaign even committed
carnivores can get behind: better conditions for farm animals.
In some ways, it’s simply a matter of style.
“Instead of telling it like it is, we’re learning to present
things in a more moderate way,” Mr. Baur said. “When
it comes to this vegan ideal, that’s an aspiration. Would I love everyone to be
vegan? Yes. But we want to be respectful and not judgmental.”
Certainly, concerns over health and food safety, and a
growing interest in where food comes from among consumers and chefs, has made
animal welfare an easier sell.
Technology has helped savvy activists deliver their message,
too — specifically mass e-mail, easily concealed cameras and the ability to
quickly distribute images online, like footage of slaughterhouses and the 2004
spoof “The Meatrix.”
They have also learned to harness the power of celebrity in
a tabloid culture, courting as spokespeople anyone famous who might have
recently put down steak tartare in favor of vegetable
carpaccio.
“I think there is a shift in public consciousness,” said
Bruce Friedrich, vice president of international grass-roots campaigns for
PETA. “When Cameron Diaz learns that pigs are smarter than 3-year-olds and
she’s like, ‘Oh my God, I’m eating my niece,’ that has an impact.”
The image makeover has been so successful that a 2006 survey
of 5,000 people ages 13 to 24 showed that PETA was the nonprofit organization
most would like to volunteer for, according to the market research firm Label
Networks. The American Red Cross was second.
Beyond image polishing, animal rights groups also learned
how to marshal resources and set up a classic “good-cop, bad-cop” dynamic to
put farm animal welfare on legislative agendas. The
The game was on. Farm Sanctuary put one of its lobbyists on
the case. The Humane Society of the
PETA, whose over-the-top protests are considered divisive by
some animal rights groups, stayed away on the day of the vote. The law is now
being reconsidered, and PETA has unleashed its supporters.
PETA uses more than half of its $30 million budget to poke
the meat and fast-food industry in the eye with shock-based educational
campaigns. PETA protesters have handed out Unhappy Meals filled with bloody,
dismembered toy animals and miniature KFC buckets filled with packets of fake
blood and bones.
As factions in the animal rights movement continue to grow
and splinter, sometimes using violence to make their point, the Humane Society,
which is 30 years older than PETA, has emerged as the reasonable, wise big
brother of the farm animal protection movement.
The arrival of Wayne Pacelle as
head of the Humane Society in 2004 both turbo-charged the farm animal welfare
movement and gave it a sheen of respectability.
As the organization’s first vegan president, he quickly
sharpened the group’s focus to farm animals. He also absorbed smaller
organizations, merging with the 180,000-member Doris Day Animal League and the
Fund for Animals. The budget has jumped to $132 million from $75 million, Mr. Pacelle said.
Like PETA, the Humane Society has purchased enough stock in
corporations like Tyson, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and
Mr. Friedrich said PETA had some early success pressuring
stockholders when it was fighting to stop companies from testing soap and
beauty products on animals. It then began buying stock in McDonald’s, attending
a shareholder’s meeting for the first time in 1998.
Like Mr. Baur, Mr. Pacelle understands that not everyone is going to stop
eating animals, so he focuses on what he calls the three R’s: refinement of
farming techniques, reducing meat consumption and replacement of animal
products. That way, he hopes, the Humane Society tent is big enough to include
both ardent meat eaters and hard-core vegans.
The broader-umbrella approach is working. Take the case of
Wolfgang Puck. In March, he announced that he would stop serving foie gras and buy eggs only from
chickens not confined to small cages. Veal, pork and poultry suppliers will have
to abide by stricter standards, too.
For five years before the announcement, Mr. Baur’s group had been pressuring Mr. Puck to change his
meaty ways. Mr. Puck, in an interview in March, said that had nothing to do
with his new policies. He simply came to the conclusion that better standards
were the best thing for his customers, his food and the animals. But he did
credit the Humane Society for his education.
Mr. Puck met Mr. Pacelle through
Sharon Patrick, a branding consultant he had hired. Ms. Patrick, the former
president of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia,
believed animal welfare could be an important component in her plan for Mr.
Puck.
She brokered a meeting between the two men, and eight months
later Mr. Puck presented his new animal welfare plan.
But farmers and corporations are only gingerly endorsing
animal rights groups — if at all.
The flurry of corporate animal welfare policies that began
in 1999 with McDonald’s are simply sound corporate strategy, company
representatives say. The genesis was likely the 1993 E. coli outbreak at Jack
in the Box restaurants, which sickened hundreds and killed four children.
Companies realized they had to get a better handle on where their meat was
coming from.
And they say it had nothing to do with PETA.
“Ask them and they will tell you they are the sole
responsible party for bringing all these changes, but I have yet to see one of
their campaigns produce results where they affected the company in terms of
customer traffic or profitability,” said Denny Lynch, a spokesman for Wendy’s.
Like other big fast food companies, Wendy’s has been a
target of animal activists’ campaigns. Earlier this month, it announced a
strengthened animal welfare policy.
Burger King executives say that at
their company, too, change is driven by consumers, not activist pressure.
“If we think consumers are a little more engaged in this,
then so are we,” said Steve Grover, vice president for food safety, quality
assurance and regulatory compliance. “I look at it like a hockey player. I want
to be there before the puck gets there.”
Cattle ranchers say pressure from PETA and Farm Sanctuary
are not the reason they have started handling animals with more care. As the
owners of Niman Ranch and Coleman Natural discovered,
people are willing to pay more for meat from animals that are better cared for
and whose origins can be traced from birth through processing.
“The groups that don’t want us to eat any animals at all are
so radical and off-the-wall that we don’t even worry about them,” said Scott
Sell, the owner of Quail Ridge Ag and Livestock Services, a
But
“Activist pressure starts it because heat softens steel,”
she said. But she also offered some friendly advice. “What the activists’
groups have to be careful about is that you want to soften the steel and not
vaporize it.”
Activists have only slightly warmer relations with chefs,
despite their recent fascination with farming.
For example, Mr. Trotter said animal welfare has become more
important because American gastronomic consumers increasingly want to do right
by the animals they eat.
“You don’t just have to be a card-carrying PETA member
anymore to go that route,” he said in an e-mail message.
The chefs Mario Batali and Adam
Perry Lang, along with the restaurateur Joe Bastianich,
are creating a company called BBL Beef Brokers to produce humanely raised meat
that is pampered from the farm to the slaughterhouse.
“From the chef’s perspective it comes down to, ‘Yeah, the
steak looks good but why is it not performing?’ ” Mr. Perry Lang said. “It’s
because of how the animal was raised and handled. That’s not animal rights, but
it is animal welfare.”
Although animal rights groups and chefs might agree that
farm animals need to be treated with more care, one side wants to put those
animals on the grill and the other wants to simply hang out with them.
The chasm between the two groups spilled over into the
August edition of VegNews, a glossy magazine that is
a mix of People and Real Simple for the meatless set. The magazine printed a
publisher’s note taking the international gastronomic group Slow Food to task
for not including more vegetarians. The story carried the headline “The
Developmentally Disabled Food Movement” and called the organization’s leaders
“human-centric food snobs.”
Erika Lesser, executive director of Slow Food
“There is a place at the Slow Food table for vegetarians,
for omnivores, whatever your ‘itarian’ persuasion is,
but I haven’t met many vegetarians who are willing to sit at the table with
omnivores,” she said.
The gap between animal lovers and animal lovers who love to
eat them is exactly what Mr. Baur, a man who eats
noodles with margarine, soy sauce and brewer’s yeast and has only barely heard
of Chez Panisse, would like to close.
“We’re not really in philosophical alignment,” he said. “But
I like to think we’re in strategic alliance.”
